Environmental democracy : legitimacy and sustainability for future generations

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ENVIRONMENTAL DEMOCRACY:

Legitimacy and Sustainability for Future Generations

Maximilian Fenner

Supervisor: Paul Raekstad Second Reader: Enzo Rossi

Words: 25,292

Student Number: 12284572

Thesis Submitted for the M.Sc. Degree in Political Science

University of Amsterdam June 2019

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Abstract

Socioeconomic institutions that do not account for the real interest in the stability of future generations cannot be considered legitimate. Inextricably linked to the destructive tendencies of capitalism, the climate emergency that faces us in the 21st_{century will require a radical}

transformation of the way political institutions are arranged and legitimated to create stability. In recent years, political theorists have taken up this aspiration to formulate nuanced models of alternatives to capitalism. But these models only tangentially address the problem of the environment. In this thesis, I take the problem of the climate emergency head on, and I propose a new model for socioeconomic institutions. First, I contrast two ways of thinking about the value of legitimacy: the ‘black’ box and ‘glass’ box models (Chapter 1). The former defines legitimacy as the ‘right to rule’ and the latter understands the concept as the ‘correspondence between norms and real interests’. I defend one real interest, the stability of future generations, to be foundational for legitimate socioeconomic institutions and premised on a commitment to ecological sustainability (Chapter 2). Next, I develop an economic model I call ‘environmental democracy’ that establishes a sufficiently robust vision for a democratic, non-capitalist future that can adequately deal with climate change (Chapter 3). Finally, I rescue environmental democracy from criticism from two alternatives to capitalism: property-owning democracy and market socialism (Chapter 4).

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Acknowledgments

First, I would like to thank my supervisor Paul Raekstad for his many helpful comments during the writing process, as well as Annette Freyberg-Inan for teaching such a stimulating thesis class with Paul.

I also thank Enzo Rossi for his guidance and encouragement throughout the year.

Thanks are due to my wife Lisa Fenner for her unwavering support, Emma Sage for the many enriching conversations now and around here and to Alex Owers for the fruitful exchange while writing the thesis.

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Introduction

In the 21st_{century, polities around the globe are now faced with challenges that continue to}

restructure human lives and renegotiate the terms of politics. Technological advancement, mass migration, global poverty and huge economic inequalities become major sites of protest and contestation of our political arrangements and economic institutions. The global integration of markets and economies pose new questions of who is governing whom while the distribution of power and coercion continues to change in the face of new political elites. And this affects the extent to which we find these arrangements legitimate and whether we can locate justice in the implementation of our regulatory frameworks.

These challenges are undergirded by the destructive tendencies of capitalism, with deregulated free market economies, the exploitation of global value chains and the commodification of human life. Historically, economic interests and the logic of profit maximization has supported various regimes of rule, ranging from colonialism to totalitarianism. And the real-life capacities of human beings are at stake, putting billions of people in precarious economic and social situations and shaking human flourishing, creativity, culture and politics to its very core. But one phenomenon undercuts all of these nonetheless important developments: our

shared environment. The unyielding destruction of our shared global ecology and ecosystems poses

new threats to how we regulate political and economic institutions. Never before has our planet been exposed to ecological changes of the scale and scope we are witnessing now.

Turning to the seriousness of the climate emergency, the most recent report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services has painted an increasingly dire picture (Díaz, Settele, and Brondízio 2019). The independent intergovernmental body argues that our shared environment “underpins all dimensions of human health and contributes to non-material aspects of quality of life – inspiration and learning, physical and psychological experiences, and supporting identities – that are central to quality of life and cultural integrity, even if their aggregated value is difficult to quantify” (Ibid., 2). And we have serious, unsurmountable problems. Here is a brief overview of the climate emergency, motivating the notion that the destruction of our environment is currently the most important crisis in contemporary politics:

i. While global food production levels are sufficient to satisfy global needs, “approximately 11 per cent of the world’s population is undernourished, and diet-related disease drives 20 per cent of premature mortality, related both to undernourishment and to obesity” (Ibid.). ii. Moreover, “indicators of regulating contributions, such as soil organic carbon and pollinator diversity, have declined, indicating that gains in material contributions are often not sustainable” (Ibid.).

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iii. They add that “[s]eventy-five per cent of the land surface is significantly altered, 66 per cent of the ocean area is experiencing increasing cumulative impacts, and over 85 per cent of wetlands (area) has been lost (Ibid., 3).

iv. In addition, “25 per cent of species in assessed animal and plant groups are threatened […] suggesting that around 1 million species already face extinction” and this is “is already at least tens to hundreds of times higher than it has averaged over the past 10 million years” (Ibid.)

v. The human population perpetuates immense levels of “greenhouse gas emissions, untreated urban and rural waste, pollutants from industrial, mining and agricultural activities, oil spills and toxic dumping” (Ibid., 4).

vi. Critically, the comment on how ‘vested interests’ support “economic incentives and policies associated with unsustainable practices of fisheries, aquaculture, agriculture (including fertilizer and pesticide use), livestock, forestry, mining and energy (including fossil fuels and biofuels)” (Ibid., 5).

vii. Furthermore, while 25% of the global land area is managed by indigenous peoples, "72 per cent [of local indicators] show negative trends in nature that underpin local livelihoods and well-being (Ibid.).

viii. And finally, they respectfully submit that across the board, established goals–– such the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)–– “cannot be met by current trajectories, and goals for 2030 and beyond may only be achieved through transformative changes” (Ibid.).

All of the empirical findings suggest that our current way of life under capitalist socioeconomic institutions cannot be sustained any further, and ‘transformative changes’ are needed. But how do we transition to new socioeconomic institutions? What should these institutions look like? And which values are most important for politics to evaluate these arrangements? This thesis seeks to explore the theoretical underpinnings of the required transformative change, articulating an approach that focuses on legitimacy and sustainability for future generation in light of the climate emergency.

However, the harmful effects of capitalism are not by any means a new area of research, and alternative economic systems have been a prominent theme in political theory. Two kinds of alternatives to capitalism are traditionally explored in the literature: property-owning democracy and market socialism (O’Neill and Williamson 2012; Rawls 2001; Roemer 1994; Schweickart 2002). The former seeks to mitigate the pitfalls of capitalism by redistributing property within a society, alleviating mass inequalities by giving individuals access to capital. Here, a political and economic system could emerge that did not concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a small class of

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capitalists but rather integrated citizens into a dynamic market based on freedom and equality. The latter seeks to democratize the market more radically and by doing so give workers a greater role in steering the means of production. On this reasoning, when workers have a voice and stake in the development and production of capital, a social order can be established that focuses on the needs of the workers rather than the profit of the capitalists.

But these models only tangentially address the problem of the environment. And while a burgeoning literature on ‘green’ political theory has emerged (Dobson 2000; Dobson and Lucardie 1993; Lane and Rosenblum 2017), there has been little sustained, rigorous and creative energy put into developing a vision for socioeconomic institutions that citizens find legitimate and further an interest that may be assumed all individuals share: the stability of future generations in terms of ecological

sustainability. In light of this lacuna in the political theory literature and the dire circumstances that

face us in the future, we are forced to answer a fundamental question: Do we have a sufficiently robust vision for a democratic, non-capitalist future that can adequately deal with climate change? This question will be the subject of this thesis.

Epistemic Blueprint

I begin with somewhat of an epistemic blueprint, in an attempt to make explicit some of my methodological commitments and the order of knowledge I find myself in.

i) First, this thesis aims to explore what is meant by the concept of ‘legitimacy’ in political theory discourse. I draw on both liberal and critical political theorists. For me, this is not only an academic exercise but also a personal decision. As a German-American, I feel at home in both analytical and continental political philosophy. Therefore, I have an interest in engaging with Anglo-Saxon political theory as well as German ‘Critical Theory’.

ii) Second, I have chosen to investigate the issue of ecological sustainability through the lens of legitimacy and not from the perspective of ‘climate justice’. There is a range of competing views and ways of thinking about climate change, sustainability, and ‘green’ governance.1_{The health of our environment, the quality of our political arrangements}

and the effects that our economic institutions have on our lives all give us reasons to care about this issue (and this goes beyond justice). My intention here is to create the logical space to think about climate issues without recourse to the grammar of justice.

1_{While I use the adjectives ‘ecological‘ and ‘environmental’ somewhat interchangeably throughout this thesis, I do}

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This choice is rooted in more strongly distinguishing between the questions that legitimacy and the questions that justice raise.

iii) As regards environmental political theory, Meyer lists three ways of thinking about environmental issues in the burgeoning literature on this issue (Meyer 2006, 771): We can look at the intellectual history of the issue of the environment, we can subject our concepts and theories to ‘green’ criticism or we can think more deeply about the foundational relationship between nature and politics. On this final front, we are required to reevaluate the boundaries of our understanding of politics in a similar way that “our personal lives are political for feminism, and our economic lives are political for Marxism” our relationship with nature has a political dimension, too (Dobson and Lucardie 1993, 231). This follows a strand of political theory that puts political activity and action in the forefront rather than our ethical lives.

iv) Following this sentiment, my understanding of the uses for political theorizing relies on a conception of politics as concerned with conflict and disagreement, the negotiation of critical political possibilities in the face of diverse groups and interests, and the recognition that there is added value to a distinctly political normativity allowing us to make judgments about politics and institutions without recourse to moral theorizing or ethics from the get-go (See, e.g., Galston 2010; Geuss 2008; Rossi and Sleat 2014; Williams 2005). While I have no intention of getting into a debate on the merits of the ‘moralism-realism’ debate, I only submit that it surely has affected my own epistemic blueprint.

v) Next, I am concerned with the extent to which two proposed alternatives to a capitalist regime of political and economic institutions can sufficiently address issues relating to the way in which climate change and environmental degradation in the 21st_{century is}

changing the way we think about politics. Therefore the literature on property-owning democracy (O’Neill and Williamson 2012; Rawls 2001; Thomas 2017) and market socialism (Rawls 2001; Roemer 1994; Schweickart 2002) informs much of my choice of institutional arrangements. But I wish to acknowledge that other alternatives, such as participatory economics or social empowerment are available (Hahnel 2005; Hahnel and Wright 2016; Wright 2010).

vi) Finally, a word on ideal and non-ideal theory is in order as this thesis aims to articulate a theoretical and practical model for socioeconomic institutions that do not exist yet. As regards ideal/non-ideal theories of justice, the distinction may be rooted in the ‘full/partial compliance’ of actors, it may focus on whether ‘feasibility constraints’ matter, or it may strive to determine an ‘end-state’, i.e. the perfect society (See Valentini

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2012). However, this is a thesis about what makes socioeconomic institutions legitimate in light of a very practical problem, namely the climate emergency. On the one hand, we may assume that ideal/non-ideal theory considerations only apply to principles of justice. On the other hand, these issues may be quite relevant as the model that I propose here is meant to replace the illegitimate capitalist socioeconomic institutions we have today. But my epistemic blueprint is also influenced by the thought that all ‘ideal theory is ideology’ (Mills 2005). I do not think that it makes much sense to think about the perfect or ‘end-state’ society. If I had to choose–– perhaps as a matter of consistency or methodological scrutiny–– then the account presented here may best be understood as a non-ideal theory. But this would require more space and time to reflect. Instead, my hope is to present some intellectual thoughts on a set of institutional arrangements that can better deal with what I take to be the most pressing challenge of our time: the destruction of the planet’s ecology and the instability for future generations to live a healthy and meaningful life.

Main Argument

In this thesis, I propose a new economic model that is democratic and anti-capitalist, which can deal with the climate emergency, putting environmental issues in the center of politics. In what follows, I construct a new economic model called ‘environmental democracy’ that primarily seeks to confront the climate emergency and can be considered legitimate in the eyes of citizens. I will argue that neither property-owning democracy (POD) nor market socialism (MS) deliver the full extent of the required theoretical resources to tackle the climate emergency. Rather, an economic model is required that puts the health of our environment and the stability of future generations in the spotlight of politics and political theorizing.

The main argument of this thesis is that ‘environmental democracy’ is the most adequate alternative to capitalism. To substantiate this claim, I proceed by first approaching the question of how to evaluate socioeconomic institutions, which fail to solve environmental issues, from the perspective of legitimacy. Instead of following the trend to call for more ‘climate justice’, which I take to be an honorable activist motto yet academically vacuous battle cry, I assume that ‘legitimacy’ is the more appropriate political value we should be concerned with. This political value tells us something about the quality of the normative relationship between institutions and citizens and its ability to reflect the reality of political circumstances.

Thus, I develop a conceptual framework for institutional legitimacy that reflects the dire need to tackle the climate emergency. I claim that institutional legitimacy is premised on the real

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model called ‘environmental democracy’ that can fulfill the requirements for legitimate socioeconomic institutions. This model is superior to both POD and MS, but I claim that it can be supported by proponents of either model. The economic environment and mechanisms that I explore seek to lay the foundation for the transformative change that is needed to transition contemporary political institutions to a world that can continue to exist sustainably and legitimately for future generations.

Relevance

The relevance and added value of this contribution is two-fold. First, this thesis addresses a highly pertinent question in the 21st century that realistically reflects the facts of our political world as it is now in around here. Multiple reports by leading institutions and international organizations point to the inevitability of critically reflecting on the way we regulate our political and economic institutions in light of the environment. Companies, governments and citizens all partake in the current climate regime and global economy that is violently destroying ecosystems around the world, putting millions of people in danger of displacement and sacrificing valuable natural perversity for the sake of profit globalization and purported human wealth and progress. Therefore, it is extremely relevant to reflect on ways of creating transformative change to address the biggest problem of our time.

Second, this thesis has scientific relevance because it addresses a limitation within contemporary political theory to adequately consider environmental sustainability and climate change. By contributing to recent debates on alternative models to capitalism, it scrutinizes an ‘environmental’ gap in the literature. The approach taken is novel because it starts from the perspective of legitimacy rather than justice. As regards environmental issues, this is a road not yet taken. This has a number of methodological benefits, for example by furthering the debate between liberals and realists. Political theorists should be intrigued that assumptions about legitimate socioeconomic institutions can be used to construct an economic model that can join the competition in theory for the best alternative to capitalist political arrangements. But the aims of this thesis are also socially and politically relevant. I hope that my contribution can guide politics in a more realistic way that is attentive to actually existing problems and crises, helping agents navigate through the terrain of difficult subjects, such as the climate emergency.

Outline

This thesis is divided into two parts. Part I establishes a conceptual foundation to assess the institutional legitimacy of socioeconomic institutions from the perspective of ecological

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sustainability. Part II proposes a new economic model that fulfills the necessary condition of institutional legitimacy in terms of ecological sustainability.

In chapter 1, I contrast two models of legitimacy, one which defines legitimacy as the ‘right to rule’ (Section 1.1) and one that defines legitimacy as the ‘correspondence between norms and interests’ (Section 1.2). I argue for the latter and explore the distinction between perceived and real interests that should correspond with the norms that socioeconomic institutions seek to embody. In the second chapter, I defend one real interest, the stability of future generations, to be foundational for legitimate socioeconomic institutions and premised on a commitment to ecological sustainability considering the contemporary challenge of the climate emergency (Section 2.1). Then, I apply this account of institutional legitimacy to capitalism and show how as a political and social system, it fails to fulfill this necessary condition of legitimacy (Section 2.2).

In the third chapter, I argue for a model of ‘environmental democracy’ that establishes a sufficiently robust vision for a democratic, non-capitalist future that can adequately deal with climate change. First, I investigate how the backdrop of politics changes under this economic model that seeks to balance the political spectrum between ecological conservation and technological advancement (Section 3.1). Next, I expand on the four norms I identified that should be embodied by socioeconomic institutions seeking to correspond to the real interest in stability for future generations, showing that both property-owning democrats and market socialists could support this model (Section 3.2).

In the fourth chapter, I rescue environmental democracy from criticism from the two alternatives to capitalism. In a first section, I address the criticism that property-owning democrats may level against environmental democracy (Section 4.1). Then, I turn to objections that market socialists may have against the model (Section 4.2). The aim of this chapter is to motivate the notion that environmental democracy could be supported by a wide variety of theorists but also to show in more depth how environmental democracy may be distinguished from POD and MS.

I conclude with a brief summary of my arguments, an overview of some of the limitations of this thesis and an outlook for future avenues of research.

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Part I: Conceptual Foundations

Chapter 1. Institutional Legitimacy during the Climate Crisis

In the first part of the thesis, I argue that ecological sustainability is a necessary condition for institutional legitimacy that is required to plausibly evaluate an alternative to capitalism. I begin by contrasting two ways of conceptualizing the concept of legitimacy: the black box and glass box models. In the first section, I examine the black box model which defines legitimacy as the right to rule (1.1.). In the second section, I investigate the glass box model which defines legitimacy as the quality of the correspondence between norms and real interests (1.2.).

However, what is the point of distinguishing between models of legitimacy? And what is the best way of going about classifying different theories? The aim of this chapter is to engage in articulating a typology of theories of legitimacy. Such an exercise in classification is appropriate here for two reasons. First, the development of a typology allows me to clearly differentiate between two families of theories of legitimacy: one family thinks about legitimacy in the tradition of rights, i.e. as a kind of license for the exercise of power; another thinks about legitimacy as a normative relationship between the interests of those affected by the institution and the actual norms it embodies. Additionally, my typology not only sets out to classify theories of legitimacy in a new way, but it also allows me to subsequently work with one of these families, having clarified what kinds of moving parts can be expected to apply to this classification.

Moreover, a second reason for working with a typology is that this kind of exercise builds on one of the most prominent theorists of legitimacy in the history of political theory, Max Weber.2

As Healy instructs us, Weber’s contribution is characterized by the heightened awareness that theory should provide “a detailed and above all realistic picture of the conditions under which political action must take place in modern societies” and that “politics remains rooted in ultimate values and is inescapably conflictual” (Healy 2012, 98). This is an important aspect of theorizing politics that I wish to hold on to, and that I hope my typology can sufficiently problematize. Therefore, this chapter is dedicated to distinguishing between two ways of thinking about legitimacy, and I choose to operationalize the second family, i.e. the glass box model because I think that it best fits in with this aforementioned Weberian aspiration.

2_{It should be noted that I do not draw on his theory of legitimacy in this thesis. Oftentimes, his conceptualization is}

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1.1. The Black Box Model of Legitimacy

Within the black box model, the concept of legitimacy is defined as the right to rule. As Buchanan puts it, “an entity has political legitimacy if and only if it is morally justified in wielding political power” (Buchanan 2002, 689–90). By means of an analogy, a fruit will be considered legitimate if it receives the right to be bought and sold. In our society, we put constraints on the shape and size of apples and oranges so that they abide by certain standards of what we consider to be a good fruit. For political institutions, we can apply an array of standards that give it a right to exercise power. Most notably, we can agree that the extent to which the institution embodies an understanding of justice or utility will determine whether it is legitimate. A socioeconomic institution can be considered legitimate if and only if it complies with a given standard (See Figure 1 below).

Figure 1: Black Box Model of Legitimacy

Oftentimes, theorists will distinguish here between normative and descriptive legitimacy. The latter is a matter of empirical social science: if we ask individuals affected by institutions whether they consent to its wielding of power, we will find out something about their attitudes. This can be helpful in identifying a ‘virtuous’ or ‘vicious’ cycle of governance because if individuals are positive towards an institution, they are more likely to comply (Krasner and Risse 2014). And we needn’t go so far in saying that this makes the concept ‘irrelevant’ (Marquez 2015) but it remains a valuable placeholder for assessing whether people are more or less likely to follow the rules. This can be especially helpful in areas of limited statehood or for transitional states, where compliance will be an essential for establishing effective and good governance (Risse, Börzel, and Draude 2018). Normative legitimacy, which I am more directly concerned with here, concerns an evaluation of a political institution in terms of justifiability among political equals (Føllesdal 2006,

‘Black Box’ Model Evaluative

Standard

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447) without reference to existing legal norms (Kumm 2016, 698). As with the analogy of the fruit, we seek to establish an evaluative standard for judging an institution that could be agreed to in abstraction among free and equal persons.

For example, we can agree that a government should not willingly kill their subjects so if they violate this (moral) standard, i.e. if that is the extent of our theory of legitimacy in abstraction, the institution can be considered illegitimate. However, if the government does protect its citizens from death then it may be considered legitimate. The metaphor of the black box captures this sentiment because as normative theorists we seek to formulate evaluative standards that can judge the legitimacy of our institutions without recourse to the contextual attitudes or interests within a political community. Historically, e.g. if we look at the Third Reich, this is required because we need to be able to say when political actions are illegitimate without taking the interests of citizens into account. If we considered the interests of a supporter of Nazi Germany as our normative standard for whether the state had a right to rule, we would not be able to make a very informed judgment about the regime. However, if we can establish universal norms, e.g. principles of justice, that everyone could agree with without looking at their interests, then we could more viably recognize when states have lost their right to rule. This normative relationship will then necessarily need to be supported by some kind of consent, i.e. that subjects of an authority voluntarily accept the justification offered.

To more deeply understand this definition, legitimacy may be contrasted with the concept of justice. Justice is a broad concept and it has a long history of different and changing definitions, and I do not have the space to describe at length its intricate genealogy (See Fleischacker 2004). However, in understanding the relation between legitimacy and justice, it helps to contrast the ‘pre-modern’ and ‘‘pre-modern’ concepts of justice. In its pre-modern sense, Aristotle understood ‘distributive justice’ to mean the allocation of political offices or assets in accordance with merit (Aristotle 2009, 1131a25 cited in Fleischacker 2004, 19). He contrasted this meaning with ‘corrective justice’ that called for wrongdoers to make do for damages caused to victims by paying them a form of compensation. While both versions of justice are committed to a norm of equality, the former requires that individuals of different merit be rewarded unequally, and the latter requires that victims be compensated equally irrespective of their individual merit (Aristotle 2009, 1132a4– 5 cited in Fleischacker 2004, 19).

But justice has also developed as a concept over time, coming to be a central ‘normalized’ node of inquiry in the discipline of political theory (P. Kelly 2006). One starting point of this transformation in meaning can be found in the work of Smith, who thematized the value in his discussion of the poor (Fleischacker 2004, 66). Because the poor could be considered to have equal intellectual capacities, the notion of desert was applied to them: it is a requirement of distributive

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justice for the state to alleviate poverty (Fleischacker 2004, 68). And this vision was further transformed by Kant as he argued for the equal worth of human beings vis-à-vis being equally deserving of a good life (Fleischacker 2004, 74). From this requirement, the state thus has a general duty to allow individuals to develop the talents and capacities needed to have a good life, requiring a just distribution of material goods. Now the leap to the modern understanding of justice is not far. Skipping over some major innovations and criticisms of justice, e.g. by Marx (Fleischacker 2004, 96–103), we arrive at Rawls’ theory of justice that has received an absolute standing: “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought” (Rawls 1971, 3).

While there is no need to rehearse the exact explication of the theory, I note in passing that this conception of justice draws from the hypothetical consent of free and equal persons in an original position that agree to principles of justice behind a veil of ignorance, i.e. they do not know what their social positions are. These principles are first, “the equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties” and second, “social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest expected benefit of the least advantaged and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity” (Rawls 1971, 53/72). These principles are important if we recall that the debate on alternatives to capitalism flow from Rawls grappling with what kind of socioeconomic institutions would be compatible with these principles. Whether or not a political institution has a right to rule will depend on whether it is morally justified in wielding power. It follows from Rawls’ conception of justice that a state will be legitimate, i.e. morally justified, if it reflects the two principles of justice. However, in his later work on political liberalism (Rawls 2005), Rawls became acutely aware of how this conception of justice may be too demanding, making very plural societies unstable. And he, therefore, devised a separate theory of political legitimacy that was more nuanced.

Rawls’ updated model has been called ‘liberal legitimacy’ (Rawls 2005; Wenar 2004), and even this very intricate theory of legitimacy (as compared to a simple one like the example of death) can be characterized as a black box model. In light of reasonable pluralism, i.e. when different groups of people live together and hold very different conceptions of the good, Rawls acknowledges the importance of legitimacy as creating stability within the society (Chambers 2012). I should note that Rawls is clear when he talks about ‘reasonable pluralism’, the different conceptions of the good in these societies are also reasonable, meaning that they have theoretical reason, practical reason, and subject their conceptions of the good life to rational revision (Rawls 2005, 59). In these kinds of ‘politically’ liberal societies, legitimacy is judged on the basis of whether public officials offer reasons that all of these citizens could agree to. Rawls also gives a minimal basis, which is some form of freedom of expression (Rawls 2005, 61). But more generally, an overlapping consensus can be formed between these very different comprehensive doctrines that

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affirm a ‘political conception of justice’, i.e. the fundamental moral ideas about what is required of justice. Although different doctrines may interpret the values of fairness, freedom and equality differently, the political conception of justice that is created in this reasonable society will create a system of basic rights and freedoms, assign these rights while also respecting contextual values and allow all citizens to take advantage of them (Wenar 2004, 7).

As regards legitimacy, if a society can meet these three abstract criteria then it can be considered legitimate. This is an interesting solution that may better be understood by analogy. The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest manmade body to orbit our planet. The space station was originally constructed by the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and Europe to further international cooperation and establish a common place for field research, transportation, collaboration and observation in space. One could say that these fundamental ideas make up an overlapping consensus, even though each country interprets and implements them in a different way. Perhaps their political conception of justice that is borne out of this consensus reaffirms a commitment to a basic system of rights and freedoms on the ISS, respects the contextual values that each have, e.g. in scientific method, and seeks to allow each country to take advantage of the rights offered to them. We may think that these terms of cooperation are legitimate because they offer reasons that make sense to each country. The institution has a right to rule because it continues to reaffirm this conception of justice. And our evaluative standards come from outside the cultural context and they are very abstract, which is beneficial (in the black box model) because it can create stability amongst very different, competing cultural practices. As long as the ISS complies with these principles of justice, it can be considered to be legitimate.

From the perspective of the black box model, this exploration of the relationship between justice and legitimacy pointed to the alleged requirement that theories of legitimacy need evaluative standards. As most of the evaluative work will be done by confirming principles of justice, legitimacy as a concept is best understood as signifying a commitment to respect some other-regarding evaluative standards. A simple standard may be that a state has the right to rule if it doesn’t kill its citizens. This is a standard that we can reason to in abstraction. But even very complex articulations of evaluative standards, such as ‘liberal legitimacy’ remain abstract and do not conceptualize legitimacy as a freestanding political value. The upshot of the black box model of legitimacy is that it allows us space to reaffirm our moral principles and comfortingly makes justice our highest value in politics. However, this begs the question: is there a thicker understanding of the value of legitimacy if we ‘open’ the black box?

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1.2. The Glass Box Model of Legitimacy

Within the glass box model of legitimacy, the concept is defined as the quality of the correspondence

between norms and real interests. By analogy, to understand the quality of a piece of fish, we are not

interested directly in whether that fish has a right to be sold, e.g. by fulfilling the correct criteria of size or shape. Rather, we are interested in how the fish has come to have a right to be sold, or in other words, why it is right. This involves an analysis of our interests in the said fish, an understanding that salmon and tuna are used in one dish while cod and bass may be used in another. The cultural context will ultimately determine whether we value the fish because of the discursive history that context has in processing the fish into a certain dish. While the quality of raw salmon may matter in some contexts, i.e. because it will be processed and served as is, in another context salmon will not be served raw.

The same can be said of institutional legitimacy. We don’t want to figure out whether a state has a right to rule based on some abstract principle or moral standing, we want to understand the quality of an institution and how subjects’ interests relate to the practice of politics in that given polity. An institution can be said to be legitimate if its purpose corresponds to the meaning attributed to it by those affected by the institution. I dub this the ‘glass box’ model because these theories seek to understand how interests are shaped and quality is defined without recourse to some other principle of evaluative standard, hence ‘opening’ the black box (See Figure 2 below).3

There are three parts to this definition of legitimacy, which I take in turn: a) norms, b) interests and c) the correspondence, i.e. relationship between a) and b).

Figure 2: Glass Box Model of Legitimacy

3_{I wish to note that I do not have the space to enter into a discussion of ‘value-laden’, ‘value-free’ or ‘value-neutral’}

concepts (See Carter 2015). But this is indeed worthy of further inquiry into the glass box model of legitimacy.

‘Glass Box’ Model Legitimacy

Norms Interests

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a) Norms

To determine whether an institution is legitimate, an analysis of the norms that that institution embodies is required. Institutions are social systems of norms and rules that make up the “stuff of social life” (Hodgson 2006, 2) as they structure our social interactions. They are a locus of power because they affect the way we act, and they affect our interests and reasons for action. Norms are also context-specific because they are interpreted in light of a certain cultural and political context. If we want to determine whether an institution is legitimate or not, we have to take stock of the norms that the institution embodies and understand how these norms are articulated in practice. As Geuss puts it, “[t]o say that the members of the society take a basic social institution to be 'legitimate' is to say that they take it to 'follow' from a system of norms they all accept; agents think the norm-system capable of conferring legitimacy because they accept a set of general beliefs (normative beliefs and other kinds of beliefs) which are organized into a world-picture which they assume all members of the society hold” (Geuss 1981, 59). While by no means does this imply that the agents an institution services have a coherent set of norms, the institution itself can only be considered legitimate if it reflects the ‘world-picture’ that is shared by their specific mode of political and cultural interaction.

For example, take an institution like democratic elections. The norms that this institution embodies, e.g. participation and representation, make sense to voters because they are integral parts of their cultural understanding of citizenship, at least in liberal democracies. The purpose of the institution will make sense to them and they will go out and vote, even if the elections in their own communities are corrupt or rigged. While most countries do not sanction non-voters (an exception is e.g. Belgium), there is a strong social pressure in most societies to go and vote. The norms of participation and representation are strongly rooted in their world-view and if an institution seizes to embody these norms then we can begin to challenge its legitimacy. But institutions also change over time, as the political science literature on institutional change can attest to (See Mahoney and Thelen 2010), and the norms may become skewed and drift from their original purpose. For example, the subject of this thesis, socioeconomic institutions, aim to structure the area of our social life that involves economic interactions. And as societal needs and economic orientation changes over time, so too do the norms that these kinds of institution seek to embody. Thus, norms make up half of the picture of legitimacy: institutions embody norms that steer our action and affect the way that we structure our lives.

b) Interests

However, an analysis of the norms that an institution embodies would be incomplete without considering the interests of those affected by the institution. When we analyze the norms of an

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institution, e.g., economic growth, we need to be acutely aware of the interests of those affected by the institution. An interest is a definitive concern that may be held by an individual, a group or a political actor. At the individual level, a basic interest may be well-being or survival while a more complex interest would be to get a good deal on a ‘selfie stick’. Individuals have personal interests that relate to their own narrative, for example, Jane has an interest in qualified medical training because she wants to get a job as a doctor. However, it is important to note that individuals never have interests in abstraction because we are all embedded in human groups, societies, cultures and polities.

While there are many ways of distinguishing between interests, I would like to make a distinction between perceived interests and real interests. A perceived interest is a subjective view that an individual may hold, e.g. “I want to buy a selfie stick”. On the one hand, perceived interests are products of personal reflection because we are in a constant process of discriminating between different concerns in our life and we are constantly changing our interests. On the other hand, perceived interests are also products of our personal narrative and the process of socialization that we are exposed to throughout our lives and make us individual subjects. For example, my perceived interest in a selfie stick is a product of the kind of social world I live in, determined by my way of living and the social group I am part of.

As regards politics, we can measure these interests with a variety of instruments, such as surveys or through election outcomes. However, singling out individual perceived interests is a tricky business because human beings hold a variety of conflicting interests, oftentimes without knowing that a said interest in X conflicts with another interest in Y. For example, I may have an interest in saving the environment by reducing my individual CO2 emissions but also an interest in driving to work in my car. These two interests are not easily compatible and may lead to what has been called ‘false consciousness’ (See Lukács 1968) because “it requires ignorance or false belief on the part of the agents of their true motives for accepting it” (Geuss 1981, 21). While I may have an interest as a coal miner to vote for the Republican party because I want to protect my job, this interest may conflict with another interest that I have, e.g., to have clean air. How can it be that an agent’s perceived interest makes sense albeit conflicting with the greater picture? The challenge here consists in identifying which interest is the ‘true’ interest, which will involve making sense of where the agent went wrong in fitting this interest into the greater narrative story of the individual’s life, i.e. “the way that agent's particular desires could be rationally integrated into a coherent 'good-life' (Geuss 1981, 47–48).

The best way to approach this is by starting from the world-view that an agents’ interests are embedded in. Any world-view will consist of the sum of ideas, beliefs and values that an actor holds. But, as I mentioned before, an individual is always a product of the culture and context it

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has been socialized in. As a point of social anthropology, all human groups will have– to some extent– a narrative story and system of ideas, i.e. an ‘ideology’, that is shared by individuals in this group. We may distinguish between ideology used in three senses: descriptive, pejorative and positive (See Geuss 1981).

In a first and very basic way of understanding ideology, our inquiry refers to the “beliefs the members of the group hold, the concepts they use, the attitudes and psychological dispositions they exhibit, their motives, desires, values, predilections, works of art, religious rituals, gestures, etc.” (Geuss 1981, 5). Here, we can locate perceived interests as they relate to the larger story of a sociocultural identity, for example by drawing attention to how the coal miner perhaps is not aware of the negative effects that smog has for his health, or we may find that he believes that climate change is a ‘hoax’. A second way of thinking about ideology is pejoratively by actively seeking out the flaws in a system of ideas. Here, we are interested in analyzing the false consciousness that agents have, e.g. in denying climate change or the Holocaust, and we want to find the resources to critique it. In a third sense, ideology is positive, meaning that we are not interested in describing a system of beliefs (descriptive) or critiquing it (pejorative). Rather, we are interested in constructing an ideology that does not yet exist in the world to guide a social group or class: Here, we want to determine “what kind of socio-cultural system or what world-view would be most appropriate for that group” and “enable the members of the group to satisfy their wants and needs and further their interests” (Geuss 1981, 22).

A theory of positive ideology will seek to articulate the interests that a social group should have in light of existing power asymmetries or instances where political power changes our interests for the worse. Or, put in other words, we can articulate a theory that exposes how “people’s wants may themselves be a product of a system which works against their interests” and relate “the latter to what they would want and prefer, were they able to make the choice” (Lukes 1974, 38). Real interests are thus a theoretical tool to identify desires and wants that social groups would have if they weren’t affected by a reigning ideology. The move to thinking about real or ‘imputed’ (German: zugerechnet) interests comes from Lukács, who grappled with how a class consciousness for the proletariat could be formulated. For him, class consciousness is ‘positive’ ideology in this sense because the perceived interests of a class are in opposition to their class consciousness (Lukács 1968, 80).

On the one hand, Lukács tells us that the ‘imputed’ interests of the bourgeoisie, which would be to more scientifically understand capitalism, are self-defeating because in the process of understanding they realize that the emergence of their class created the class conflict internal to capitalism. On the other hand, the proletariat cannot free itself as a class without abolishing class society, i.e. imputed proletariat class consciousness seeks to free human beings from class

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consciousness, tout court. The proletariat’s positive ideology is both ‘the aim and the weapon’ that can “show the way out of the crisis of capitalism” (Lukács 1968, 91). But there is some unclarity in the language used in the literature, and it may be helpful to address these differences to understand what is at stake. Lukács contrasts ‘empirical’ and ‘imputed’ interests (Lukács 1968, 11). While he calls empirical interests ‘real’, i.e. because people can be said to hold them if you were to ask them, this is not what I mean by ‘real’. His notion of empirical interests is what I call ‘perceived’ interests. Rather, imputed interests are interests that Lukács ‘ascribes’ to a certain social class that have a distinct aim in creating transformative social change.

Another way of thinking about ‘real’ interests may be to say that while perceived interests are empirical in the sense that they can be subjectively confirmed by individuals that purport to hold them at a certain time, real interests are interests that an individual would hold without conflict between other interests. Perceived interests are shaped by ideologies, so if we can show how an ideology is flawed, we may, for example, learn how “practices that are partial, in the sense of biased toward the interests of one party, lead to characteristic failures of rationality in one’s reasoning about what to do politically” (Stanley 2016, 181). This may be an approach that a theorist like Stanley would defend (if put on the spot) because he understands ideology like this: “ideological belief, since it is resistant to rational revision, is by its nature epistemologically defective” (Stanley 2016, 197). Thus, we can scrutinize perceived interests through a critique of the ideological practices that support those interests, shedding light on political issues. However, this latter way of thinking about interests and ideology critique is not what I am after in this thesis. Here, pejorative and positive ideology critique would collapse into each other and “become blurred” (See Geuss 1981, 24).

Instead, the notion of ‘real’ interests that I am after is closest to Geuss’ understanding of formulating positive ideology. We elaborate on the real interests that social groups would hold if the reigning ideology of political institutions did not keep them from expressing these interests. In terms of investigating the legitimacy of publicly exercised authority through socioeconomic institutions (which is the subject of this essay), I am thus interested in postulating the real interest in

the stability of future generations that serves to guide practice, especially with a focus on the

environment. Instead of only relying on the “overt preferences, revealed in the political arena by political actors taking policy stands or by lobbying groups” (Lukes 1974, 5), which would be to engage in examining the descriptive legitimacy of perceived interests, I am interested in how the aforementioned real belief corresponds with the norms that socioeconomic institutions embody. After discussing how I envision the correspondence to work in the glass box model between norms and interests, it will be my aim to develop this real interest in more detail in the next chapter.

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c) Correspondence

The third aspect of legitimacy in the glass box model is that of correspondence, or in other words, the normative relationship between norms and interests that institutions should seek to cultivate. An objection that may arise, regarding the discussion of Lukacs above, is that institutions may never be legitimate unless the norms somehow correspond to the real interest in rebuking the class system entirely. While this may be true, it is still desirable to remain realistic about what we can bring about in the world and through politics. In addition, there could be no society in the future (that lacks a class system), unless we create some sort of stability for future generations. The major site for this will be in terms of ecological sustainability. So, in that sense, the stability of future generations is required if we aim to transition into a society that has no class system. However, this should not be taken as the intent of this project, I merely respond to an objection that Marxists rightfully might make.

If we recall the pre-modern understanding of justice, Aristotle argued that the concept has something to do with what is due, i.e. relying on ‘merit’ or ‘wrong’. We saw that this understanding of justice was undergirded by a notion of equality: individuals should be rewarded unequally based on merit and equally when it comes to compensation for a wrong. However, it is very important here to recognize that the determination of what counts as ‘merit’ or a ‘wrong’ is dependent on the context a hand (Geuss 2008, 75). While computer savvy or entrepreneurialism may have merit in one community, these attributes may not be of much value in another. Later the term became closely associated with an understanding of ‘desert’, as we saw through Smith’s sympathy with alleviating poverty. This developed into the idea that all human beings have equal worth and thus are ‘deserving’ of attention by the state. Legitimacy, however, seemed to come in only after the articulation of an abstract standard of justice was established. In the glass box model, which focuses on the quality of the correspondence between norms and interests, the right to rule principle is rejected. We are not interested in establishing the terms for which an institution can be said to receive a ‘right’ but rather whether the institutional norms, e.g. of a socioeconomic institution, can be said to stand in a healthy relationship with an identified interest. In other words, we should be interested in looking inside of this special normative relationship, find ways of exploring its implications for institutions, and discover ways of creating stability for the future.

Additionally, the right to rule principle is flawed because it mistakes the capacity for an institution or an entity to have an abstract ‘right’. We can contrast two ways of thinking about the concept of right: in an ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ sense (Geuss 2008, 60). I already alluded to this distinction when I discussed the analogy of buying fish. In the objective sense of right, we make statements like “it is right to buy this fish” whereas in the subjective sense we say, “I have a right to buy fish”. When we try to determine whether it is right to buy a fish, we will draw on the

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context-dependent practices involved in evaluating the quality of the said fish, e.g. raw salmon can be used for sushi because it does not contain parasitic organisms when it is fresh as opposed to other fish that do, like trout. But this understanding of right depends also on the history of the practice. In Japan, where sushi developed as a way of serving fish, the salmon native to those waters are in fact parasitic because the Pacific Ocean is home to a certain type of salmon. However, in the fresh rivers of Northern Norway, the salmon have developed biologically to not contain parasitic organisms that those home to the Pacific do. In the course of the ‘cascading’ of eating sushi in the West in the 1980s, Norway took advantage of this great market opportunity and began exporting raw salmon to be eaten in sushi bars, de facto creating the salmon sushi Europeans and Americans now so prize. To say that it is ‘right’ to buy raw salmon for sushi is then dependent on this strange history of the dish.

However, the subjective sense of an entity ‘having a right’ can be derived from a tradition of European thought closely linked with the transformation of the concept of justice I described previously. Because human beings are seen to have equal moral worth and are thus deserving of state aid to develop their capacities and lead a good life, they have been endowed with rights to protect this interest. This involves the creation of some kind of legal-political instrument to protect these interests based on some fundamental categorization that we all share. As we saw in the discussion of other liberal theorists, like Rawls, “candidates for the property of a human subject by virtue of which that subject comes to be a bearer of rights include being a child of God, being (potentially) autonomous, being a chooser, being rational, being capable of having a life-plan” (Geuss 2008, 63). The latter categories seem to allude to the way in which Rawls conceptualizes ‘comprehensive doctrines’ as being rational. But it is important to acknowledge that this development marks a historical and cultural development of what it means to interpret something as ‘right’, which Geuss argues is “a philosophical dead end” (Ibid., 67) because it is only a reversal of the original question of whether something can be considered right in a certain context. Rather we should be asking more important and relevant political questions like “Is it possible to organize a ‘complex modern’ society without the use of the concept of a ‘right,’” or “What is it about our specific form of society that makes ‘individual rights’ so convenient and plausible?” (Ibid., 69).

As regards the correspondence of norms and interests, the ‘right to rule’ definition fails because it asks the wrong normative question. Instead of trying to formulate an abstract principle that gives an institution a right, it may rather be formulated as “under what circumstances can it be that it is right for a state to rule”. This question is then about the quality of the norms that an institution embodies in trying to exercise power and how these relate to real interests that the citizens of a certain political context actually have. One example of a real interest that has been established in the literature, is what Bernard Williams calls the ‘basic legitimation demand’ (BLD),

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which results from a first political question about a state’s ability to secure “order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation” (Williams 2005, 3).

Taken from the perspective of the glass box model, I would argue that this expresses a real interest held by all subjects of political authority to have a basic modicum of protection and conditions of social cooperation. Moreover, Williams theory of legitimacy is a good example of the glass box model because it enquires into the normative relationship between this interest, i.e. expressed by the BLD, and the norms that the state seeks to embody. It is argued that institutions that seek to answer this first political question must “offer justification of its power to each subject” (Ibid., 4). The correspondence of the norms that the institution seeks to embody, for example, freedom and equality in the case of liberalism, must correspond to the real interest in protection. To secure this, the way in which political power is exercised must “make sense” (MS) to the subjects who have that real interest in a way that is intelligible to people living under the authority (Ibid., 11). Moreover, the BLD, i.e. this real interest of the political subjects, will be historically and culturally variant, and the way that a state establishes this order will change over time. Call this the narrative or legitimation story that the institution is telling. This means that there will be many iterations of the answer to the question, e.g. a feudal system perhaps made sense to political subjects in the 15th_{century while it does not in modernity.}

Moreover, as the historically variant iteration of the institutional answer to political subjects’ real interests change, the correspondence between the two may become distorted. If the way in which a state answers the question stops making sense to the subjects, we have an obvious reduction in the quality of this correspondence. For example, for many citizens of Hungary, Orbán’s regime no longer corresponds with democratic norms because the government is largely corrupt (See Lendvai 2018). However, Williams also considers situations where the exercise of political power seemingly ‘makes sense’ to subjects. Political institutions may come to employ methods of justification that are skewed in favor of more subtle forms of political coercion. He therefore establishes a ‘critical theory principle’ (CTP) that requires that states justify their power to each subject without recourse to narratives or ideologies that are in their favor (Williams 2005, 14).

As we saw in the discussion on interests, oftentimes political subjects will come to hold contradictory world-views that are ideologically flawed. If a state actively draws on these flaws to support their power, then we may use the CTP, which has also been interpreted as a kind of ideology critique (See Prinz and Rossi 2017), to question the legitimacy of the authority in question. For example, when American politicians deny climate change as a justification for subsidizing pipelines or coal mines, the story they are telling is biased towards a false consciousness, or an ideological world view. In short, the quality of correspondence is expressed here by making an

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evaluative judgment about a disconnect between the real interest in stability for future generations by protecting the environment from destruction and degradation and the norms embodied in an institution that actively supports pipelines and coal mines.

To conclude this section comparing black and glass box models of legitimacy, I wish to briefly sum up my main points. We saw that the black box model, expressed in a ‘right to rule’, conceptualizes institutional legitimacy as subject to some evaluative standard, e.g. a political conception of justice. The black box is a closed container that seeks to supply reasons to comply with political authority without reference to what is inside the box, namely the interests of political subjects. The glass box model seeks to overcome this requirement by conceptualizing legitimacy as the normative relationship between norms and interests. To anticipate an objection here, one might say that the glass box model suffers from the same problem as the black box model: legitimacy is subjected to the real interests of the individuals subject to institutions. While I cannot fully address this here because of spatial limitations, I wish to just draw attention to how the glass box model accepts that there is an internal structure of the concept of legitimacy that seeks to ‘bridge’ a value system expressed in real interests with the empirical world embodied by norms (Carter 2015, 287). Instead of requiring an abstract standard to judge whether an institution is legitimate, we can inquire into the interests that should be reflected in the norms an institution seeks to embody (See Figure 3 below for the comparison).

Figure 3: Two Models of Legitimacy Compared

In this section, I explored one example of a theory that falls within this model, namely Williams’ conception of realist legitimacy. As I will flesh out more fully in the subsequent chapter, the real interest that socioeconomic institutions should be concerned with for their institutional

‘Black Box’ Model Evaluative

Standard

Legitimacy

‘Glass Box’ Model Institutional

Legitimacy

Embodied Norms Real Interest

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legitimacy from the perspective of ecological sustainability is the stability of future generations (2.1.). Like the BLD, this ecological principle reflects the real interest of citizens subjected to political authority. As we will see, capitalist socioeconomic institutions cannot fulfill this necessary condition of legitimacy (2.2). We can observe that the quality of correspondence between the real interest has been diminished by norms embodied in capitalist institutions that promote growth at any cost, exploit the labor force for profit in the hands of the few, and create a system of desires that run contrary to the stability of future generations.

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2. Environmental Requirements for Institutional Legitimacy

In this section, I argue that all political subjects have a real interest in the stability of future generations. The health of our environment, the quality of our political arrangements and the effects that our economic institutions have on our lives all give us reasons to care about the stability of future generations in terms of ecological sustainability. Sustainability is a concept appropriated both by radicals who aim to either conserve a romanticized vision of a healthy environment (See Magdoff and Williams 2017) or control the environment with new technological advancements (See Latour 2018), it is also a prominent theme of defenders of the status quo, i.e. big corporations who push sustainability to help their image and continue to maximize profits. And the political and economic choices made in the midst of this debate have lived effects on our environment. An interest in the basic stability and protection provided by political institutions is dependent on the ability for socioeconomic institutions to reproduce themselves. In a first section, I discuss in depth of what is meant by ecological sustainability being a necessary condition of a theory of institutional legitimacy for socioeconomic institutions (2.1.). Then, I scrutinize capitalist institutions, showing that they cannot fulfill this condition and it thus follows that they can be considered illegitimate.

2.1. ‘Ecological Sustainability’ as a Necessary Condition

In brief, the argumentative structure is as follows: We value the concept of legitimacy because it expresses the quality of correspondence between real interests and the norms of an institution. I am interested in one particularly weighty interest, namely the stability of future generations. One particular aspect of stability for the future is ecological sustainability because, under the political circumstances of the 21st_{century, the Earth’s climate is now an emergency. If nothing is done to}

mitigate global heating, destruction of biodiversity, the production of waste and pollution, and the unsustainable extraction of natural resources, life of the human species will not be possible in the future. The claim is that ecological sustainability is a necessary condition of legitimacy of current socioeconomic institutions because without it, the stability of future generations is not secured. To boot, the stability of current generations is increasingly challenged by the climate emergency, so it is time to act on this real interest and change our economic institutions.

One way of making this claim would be with reference to an anthropocentric argument: if the human species wishes to continue to flourish and nourish the ways of life we have built over the past, let’s say 10,000 years, we need to recognize that the health of our surroundings will determine the quality of our progress and development as a species. As De-Shalit puts it, “human beings cooperate with nature; they depend on nature; and yet, they differ from other animals in that their intellectual abilities allow them to cooperate with nature in a sophisticated manner, to take whatever they want from nature and reshape it to suit their own needs” (De-Shalit 2000, 179).

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Another claim may be made in a non-anthropocentric way, the human species is just one of many animal species living on this planet and we should begin to understand that our different ways of living as humans stand in a relational connection to the other animals that inhabit the earth. In other words, “[t]he environment has to be recognized as an essential, fundamental part of the infrastructure of social activities and processes… the government should realize that it has the task of guaranteeing the continuity of this infrastructure, and not just for the present generation, and not just for human beings… even if this is to be at the expense of the present generation’s economic interests” (Opschoor 1989, 184–85 cited in Achterberg 1993, 83).

Furthermore, Achterberg argues that even within a liberal framework, “policy aiming at sustainability must help to secure favorable conditions for the protection, maintenance and development of this good [stability for future generations]” (Achterberg 1993, 98). This argument advances two important claims relevant to the real interest of the stability of future generations. First, it draws our attention to the apparent relationship between past, present and future generations in factually reproducing a social system, including the wants, needs and perceived interests that will come to determine our socioeconomic effect on the environment. But it also makes the claim that socioeconomic institutions have the task to guarantee the continuity of stable infrastructure. This claim is a very powerful one because without considering the stability of future generations, the current social and political order is inherently unstable, and thus, inherently illegitimate.

If institutions are therefore inherently unstable and thus illegitimate if they do not take this real interest into account, what kind of norms should socioeconomic institutions embody to secure this interest? I defend four norms that socioeconomic institutions should embody if they wish to service this real interest: a) socioeconomic institutions must reproduce a system of ecologically oriented desires, b) support a system of employment that does not reproduce unsustainable desires, c) foster a system of growth that prioritizes social capital over material capital, and d) creates the possibility to participate in economic planning. The brunt of the argument is about social reproduction, i.e. to achieve this, institutions have to ensure that a system of desires is sustainable, and that employment can support these desires in the long run. Because the accumulation of material capital always runs the risk of reproducing a system that is ecologically unsustainable because it relies on the exploitation of more and more natural resources, the development of social capital seems to be more appropriate. How this could be measured I leave aside here, but it suffices to recognize that a social system that occupies its citizens with intellectual endeavors can be sustained over time because it does not inherently require natural resources.

In addition, checks and balances should be implemented by institutions. Participation in decision making allows for institutions to continually make sure that economic activity is not

Environmental democracy : legitimacy and sustainability for future generations